Bond of brothers should worry the contenders

Amy Jenkins

I mostly get on with my brother and sisters and so have never thought much about sibling rivalry. Of course, I've come across countless people who struggle with their siblings but, despite all this, I've never really come to grips with what a powerful and challenging relationship this is.

I mostly get on with my brother and sisters and so have never thought much about sibling rivalry. Of course, I've come across countless people who struggle with their siblings but, despite all this, I've never really come to grips with what a powerful and challenging relationship this is.

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Bond of brothers should worry the contenders

Independent.ie

I mostly get on with my brother and sisters and so have never thought much about sibling rivalry. Of course, I've come across countless people who struggle with their siblings but, despite all this, I've never really come to grips with what a powerful and challenging relationship this is.

According to Rowe, if David should lose today's UK Labour leadership election to his younger brother Ed, he could suffer not just a political disappointment but also a profound feeling of annihilation.

Rowe's book describes brilliantly the sense of complete invalidation that is brought about by discovering your life is not what you think it is. In sibling terms, this is when the seemingly inviolable world order that is established in childhood is proved to be a construct, a mere interpretation and -- horror of horrors -- little brother has a different way of seeing things.

It's well known that in the family context you are both your self and your role. If you're the eldest, you might get used to being more powerful or wiser or the one that knows how to work the TV. Then you grow up and discover your younger siblings know things themselves.

Plus, each sibling interprets the situation so differently. The older might think the younger owes them for spoiling their brief lovely moment of being the only child, but then it turns out the younger thinks the older owes them, for always being the first to do everything.

Siblings

So you adapt and pretend to be grown-ups. The trouble is, when it comes to siblings, you're not actually grown up -- you get thrown back into your childhood position. As Rowe points out, just as you can become like a child again around your parents, you can become a child again around your siblings.

When you're with a sibling you can never not be older or younger and everything that means in terms of the family dynamic. Then there's the fact that if you were labelled as the 'good' one or the 'wild' one, that will always be with you as well.

One of the problems with sibling relationships is that they often look and feel like friendships -- but Rowe calls siblings "dangerous friends". Like it or not, a friend is disposable and a sibling isn't. Before you have a row with a sibling you need to consider not just the immediate consequences but the next 40-odd years. Siblings, like dogs, are for life.

David and Ed have pretty much pooh-poohed the whole sibling rivalry thing in the course of the leadership campaign -- David saying definitively that "politics will never come in the way of family". The thing is, will family come in the way of politics?